The invention initially relates to a communication method between a management information system, in which a field content is stored, and an execution system, wherein the field content is transmitted from the management information system to the execution system in Job Definition Format, then it relates to a communication method between a source system, in which a field content is stored in a file in Job Definition Format, and to an execution system, wherein the field content is transmitted from the source system to the execution system in Job Definition Format, and eventually, to a communication module, through which a field content in Job Definition Format can be transmitted to an execution system.
The Job Definition Format “JDF” (and the job messaging format “JMF” as a subset of JDF) are generally known data formats, which have been developed and are being maintained by the consortium “International Corporation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press, Post Press” (“CIP4-Consortium”, www.cip4.org). The development of JDF is based on the objective to standardize the communication between print shop, designer, advertising agency, customer for printed materials, and vendors of subcontractors in the framework of a networked graphic production for all production options and eventualities in a flexible manner without restrictions.
JDF is based on the extensible markup language “XML”, a meta language for defining document types, which is also commonly known and was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (“W3C”, www.w3.org), and is intended, according to the CIP4-Consortium, to serve as a standardized data format for describing methods and products, not only in all production areas of a networked print shop, but also particularly in sales, job costing and order processing, production planning and control, in production itself, in preproduction, print, print post processing, and shipping, in the cross sectional areas of materials- and warehouse management, finance and payroll accounting, controlling, cost accounting, and quality insurance.
Through vertical integration of data of the production process, on the one hand, and the accounting areas, on the other hand, JDF is intended to allow a high transparency of all production processes, a standardized documentation of the relevant target- and actual data and an integrated production control, in an understandable and integrated data structure. In particular, an order in JDF format shall only be described once in a format, which all process participants understand, also in external communications with customers, as well as with subcontractors and their execution systems, in man-machine and machine-machine-communications over language and platform boundaries.
Contrary to the philosophy of the CIP4-consortium and the JDF concepts based thereupon, in actual operations of networked printing plants there are multiple restrictions and specific differences with respect to the data formats, which the particular process partners use and understand.
Job data are e.g. being stored in generally known execution systems on commercially available computer components, in particular, on non removable or removable media. Herein, the designation of a job is being used as a directory name, e.g. for structuring the data on the medium. Already depending on the file system used, the characters available for directory names are restricted to different extents. Thus, the known file systems basically do not allow the use of certain special characters in file and directory names.
A restriction with reference to the usable character set thus results with reference to national special characters (as e.g. the German “Umlauts”), which often cannot or cannot be correctly displayed in the display components of the known systems, which are at least internally mostly geared towards the English language. In addition, the FAT file system, which is e.g. still being widely in use in older existing soft- and hardware components, restricts any file- or directory name to the (also commonly known) “8.3-Format”. Besides such system related restrictions with reference to the field contents processible on known execution systems, an additional specific regulation requirement results from different specifications for field contents in management information systems and in execution systems connected therewith.
In known management information systems, address fields are e.g. provided with several lines as edit “edit text” field, wherein the particular lines are separated by page break characters (e.g. “\n”). In known execution systems, address data, however, are often being processed as a one line field.
Methods, as mentioned above, for communication between management information systems or source system, and connected execution systems in Job Definition Format, are commonly known in networked printing plants. The specific problems in communications between systems with different formats are not being solved in the specification of JDF.
The known processes on the one hand resort to the definition of restricted entry formats in the employed management information systems, or on the other hand to manual modification of the transmitted field contents directly at the execution systems, for the communication between systems with incompatible field formats. For example, the field “Descriptive Name” provided in the Job Definition Format for a one line job name, is defined as a character string without length restriction. To the contrary, the CIP4-consortium recommends in the Interoperability Conformance Specifications (ICS) for the communication of a management information system with an execution system, to keep this character string “as short as possible”. As a reason it is being stated, that many display devices had only limited opportunities to display an order description.
The possibility of recipient specific rule based adaptation of field contents is basically known, as it is disclosed e.g. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,144,969 A, in the form of the adaptation of file names to the requirements of a target system. The application of this basically known process in the framework of the JDF based communication contradicts the philosophy of the CIP4-consortium and the concept of JDF based thereupon in an elementary manner, which specifically includes the use of a standardized file over the whole system and independent from the respective receiver.
It is the object of the invention to simplify the communication between management information systems or source systems and execution systems in Job Definition Format, and to make them less error prone.